


Outer Rim

by akathecentimetre



Category: Pacific Rim (2013), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, F/M, Gen, Jaeger Pilots, Kaiju, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-20
Updated: 2015-12-05
Packaged: 2018-03-18 15:58:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3575231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akathecentimetre/pseuds/akathecentimetre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The first breach appeared in the Outer Rim nearly twenty-five thousand years ago – a fissure between galaxies, perhaps between dimensions. The first kaiju turned Tatooine into a desert.</i>
</p><p> <i>But the Light was winning. The Light was secure. The Jedi were heroes – <b>we</b> were heroes.</i></p><p>Pacific Rim AU! Obi-Wan centric; will eventually cover the entire prequel trilogy. Now with illustration by <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/JakartaInn/pseuds/JakartaInn">JakartaInn</a>!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Trailer and Prologue

*

[Trailer](http://commonplacecaz.tumblr.com/post/114100459971/outer-rimprologuethe-first-breach-appeared-in-the) by me, [akathecentimetre](http://archiveofourown.org/users/akathecentimetre/).

*

_The first breach appeared in the Outer Rim nearly twenty-five thousand years ago – a fissure between galaxies, perhaps between dimensions. The first kaiju turned Tatooine into a desert._

_In the ensuing galactic panic it took nearly five hundred years to recognize that this was not going to stop, and for anyone to realize any plan to the extent needed to find the breaches – for oh, yes, there was more than one, they damn well **multiplied** – and construct any sort of defense. The failure of the first attempts to destroy the kaiju with ships came down to maneuverability; the next, to the shocking accidental discovery that the Dark Side of the Force rolled off of them in waves, pulsing through the universe, destroying the Light._

_It was only a matter of time before the Jedi were called upon to be the protectors of the nascent Republic; only a matter of time before they realized that the monstrous machines they built, hyperspace-capable and coded to their very souls, needed more than one pilot. They started winning. **We** started winning, despite every attack, despite every new breach, despite the realization that some kaiju were sentient, that some could communicate into and through the Dark, that some of them could even take the orders of an ambitious Sith._

_The Light was winning. The Light was secure. The Jedi were heroes – **we** were heroes._

_Pride cometh before a fall: perhaps the Republic knew this, perhaps the Senate did, in their wildest nightmares. The Jedi knew it every year, and were aware of it every hour, every minute of their lives. Each of them, as they fanned out to distant Shatterdomes and scoured the galaxy for Force-sensitive children, knew that they were co-opting younglings into a life which could end only in sorrow. For you see, a jaeger pilot is only complete with their Bonded: with their co-pilot alone are they complete. The destruction of a jaeger, or the death of one, means the complete destruction of both. Such a terrible truth had to be hidden: only those inside the Temple knew that when one pilot lived, and was asked to Choose a new helpmate, slaughter could follow – first of others, and then, invariably, of themselves._

_In the aftermath of Xanatos, Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi became co-pilot of the newly-renamed **Living Force** based solely on the dubious honor of being the only youngling to come out of Qui-Gon Jinn’s Choosing Room alive._

_Ten years later, General Kenobi was certain beyond doubt – beyond anything – that he would rather die, rather extinguish himself, than ever go through the same thing._

*

**TBC**

*


	2. Part 1

*

The alarm wakes Obi-Wan just after dawn, blaring down the quiet corridors of the Temple so loudly that the Force shouts with the sudden startlement of a thousand Jedi dragged out of their sleep. An unending klaxon, four blares of noise between each pause: kaiju, Core Worlds, Category Four.

“Are you planning on rejoining the land of the living anytime soon?” Qui-Gon is already at his door, already sipping a mug of tea – damn the man and his wizardry with a tea-kettle, how does he _do_ it so fast – but only half-dressed, thankfully, which makes Obi-Wan feel a little less pathetic as he emerges from underneath his covers. “Planet-destroying amphibians wait for no man.”

“Tea,” Obi-Wan groans, and manages to get his feet underneath him just in time to not fall face-first onto the floor. They are only a few hours home from a previous mission, and he still feels the remnants of neural exhaustion pulling at him from all sides as his mind whispers to the Force and it responds, soothing away his hurts.

Qui-Gon only snorts, and pushes his own mug of tea into Obi-Wan’s hands before turning away, no doubt to make himself another. “Handshake in fifteen minutes. And by all the gods, _please_ shave.”

Obi-Wan grins, enjoying the pull and scratch of stubble on his cheeks. He’d started growing it a couple of weeks before, finally tiring – at twenty-three, and three years after his Knighting and promotion to General, because apparently it was considered inappropriate for a Master to be paired with anyone ranked lower than that – of being confused for a Padawan and novice pilot. He rather likes his new look, ragged as it is, and given Qui-Gon’s own grooming habits he hardly has grounds for his complaint. The tea hits his muscles, then, subtle and quick, and as he pulls his tunics over his head and steps into his boots the klaxon, mercifully, falls silent, which means orders are not far behind.

“ _LIVING FORCE, TEN MINUTES._ ”

“That’s us,” his Master calls from the other room, and as Obi-Wan emerges he sees Qui-Gon is as prepared as he, loose-limbed and powerful. “Are you ready?”

“More than,” Obi-Wan says, and together they start running.

The corridors clear for them; Jedi and bystanders alike watch them pass in silence, in a quiet gladness. The Force gathers in strength around them, speeds their feet to their hangar –

And there she is. Huge, sleek, nearly the height of the Temple itself, gleaming in shades of dark iridescent green. It’s taken mere hours for _Living Force_ to be repaired from her last adventure, and she is as beautiful and deadly as ever.

There are comms systems all over the building, and so Yoda’s voice reaches them while they are still in the turbolift up to her head, hungrily looking out. “ _Appeared from a new breach near Metellos, the beast has_ ,” the distant Jedi Master says, his voice echoing down the corridor they race through as their engineers follow quickly after, the hatch waiting open and inviting. “ _Too near Coruscant, this is. Stopped, it must be._ ”

“It will be,” Qui-Gon says, and then, so quickly, they are stepping into their suits, in that same shade of dark green; it looks stupendous on Qui-Gon, creature of forests and living things as he is, while Obi-Wan sees it as a symbol of their joining, of his submission and raising up to its grace. Armor clinks and settles as the entirety of _Living Force_ starts to move, slowly and powerfully; she is being towed to the opening hangar doors, her hyperdrive warmed and calibrated by ground staff as her pilots ready themselves.

“ _Handshake in thirty seconds_.” It is Mace over the comms this time, firm, calm. “ _Sorry to send you out again so soon_.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Obi-Wan says, knowing that his grin is sharp and pointed, hungry. “There’s no better feeling.”

“ _Indeed_ ,” Mace says, sounding only vaguely amused, and Qui-Gon looks over at Obi-Wan with a crooked smile that tells him far more.

“ _Ten seconds_.” A pause, and Obi-Wan closes his eyes as the flight engineers scurry away, leaving them blessedly alone. “ _Five. Four. Three. Two. One_ – ”

_templecrechemasterstarspilotfriendsenemiesmasterpadawanjaegerxanatosforcejedi **force** mastermasterMASTER –_

When he opens his eyes again, they are one. They turn. They perform their calibrating kata, tons and tons of metal groaning and dancing. By the time they have reached 100% handshake, they are itching to fly. _Living Force_ is a part of them, too, part of their flesh and bones and metal marrow. The universe has become liquid around them, merely a medium for their grace.

“ _May the Force be with you,_ ” Mace says.

 _Oh, and it is,_ they think, and they leap for the sky.

Mere hours later, Obi-Wan will scream _saber_ in Qui-Gon’s voice, and their jaeger’s deadly weapon – green like its masters – will skewer a miles-long monster to a mountain range in the desert wasteland of Metellos. It has destroyed two whole sectors of the planet, ending millions of lives.

It is their tenth kill of the year.

*

Obi-Wan had been twelve, and weeks away from confirmation that he would be moved permanently to Warrior training, when the rumors started that Master Qui-Gon Jinn had emerged from Isolation. They continued unabated for three days, and the sudden absence of Masters Yoda and Windu only fueled the flames.

 _We could die tomorrow_ , the Initiates whispered. _Or today. Or in a ten-day. Or maybe he will be merciful, and just Choose and be done with it._

Somehow, given Master Jinn’s reputation, Obi-Wan had very much doubted that, and he hadn’t been the only one. In his more hopeful moments, he’d reassured his friends that perhaps Master Jinn would retire; that he wouldn’t choose a new Padawan, that the gloriously beautiful and broken jaeger in Hangar 6 would stay dormant, be chopped up for scrap, or perhaps just taken down into the bowels of the Temple as another teaching tool on the subject of the aftereffects of attachment.

The fact that it was all so _exciting_ just made them feel sick. Today, or tomorrow, or in a ten-day, one of them might be Chosen. One of them might be elevated from the altogether respectable, occasionally adventurous, still Force-blessed life of a Warrior into something so much _more_ – into a world of lightsabers hundreds of feet long, of monsters and mechanized gods.

If they were going to die, they knew they would prefer to die that way – entangled in the arms of some dimension-hopping beast infected with the black miasma of the Dark Side, hundreds of light-years from home, their selves obliterated by the Force singing through them. Sometimes, Obi-Wan felt rationally enough about it to recognize that it wasn’t healthy for so many children to want that heartbreak – to risk everything, to risk total destruction in the event that they would survive a co-pilot’s death.

Most other times, though, he wanted to be chosen as a Padawan so badly it cost him sleep for days at a stretch.

He had known that, were the Order better organized and there were enough masters and jaegers to go around, he would have had a fighting chance. He’d piloted up to a Delta jaeger on his own; his lightsaber skills were adequate, his understanding of the Force satisfactory, his ability to lose himself within it in his calmer moments top of his class. Time, however, that unrelenting master, was running out, and he had been taking the news that he was due to be reassigned more childishly than he had expected even of himself.

But then the whispers started that the door to Qui-Gon Jinn’s room had opened for the first time in eight months, and Obi-Wan and his agemates gathered in a training sale and meditated together for the last time. It only took three days, in the end, for the Choosing to be announced, and when the first and most highly-anticipated group of ten initiates was summoned, Obi-Wan Kenobi’s name was listed as number nine.

Obi-Wan had thought upon entering that Master Jinn was in better shape than was reputed for a Jedi pilot who had lost a bond. He certainly was no less imposing, no less frightening, standing there with lit lightsaber in hand than he could possibly have been had he still been – again, according to rumor – stark raving mad.

Masters Windu and Yoda stood by as referees, but there was little they could do. The first Initiate dropped their guard within thirty seconds, and paid for it with their life, and Obi-Wan and all of his remaining crechemates gasped and trembled with the shock of it.

“This is a mistake,” Master Jinn said quietly after the second child died, but to whom, Obi-Wan could not guess. There was no mistaking the pain in the master’s voice, however, and no mistaking that his slaughter was far from over.

Obi-Wan was the fifth to fight him, and nearly dropped his saber at the first blow. He lost track of time almost immediately, had to start counting it in wounds and burns, and only realized what was happening when his mental tally got to six. The Force was guiding his limbs so much that he could not feel his hands; he saw Jinn, towering over him, as nothing more than a shapeshifting body of muddied, blinding light.

 _No_ , he’d thought wildly, stumbling on the sweat-slicked floor, not daring to spare a glance at Yoda or Windu as Jinn advanced again. _No. He must be tiring. He’s toying with me. I cannot bear succeeding, not at this, not **like** this –_

“Halt,” Windu called out, angry and commanding, but Jinn did not stop. His green lightsaber met Obi-Wan’s blue, finally forced him into a tangled heap on the floor.

“Qui-Gon!” Windu again, sharper, afraid. “I said stop!”

Obi-Wan, hurting all over, his head aching, didn’t even realize immediately that he had spoken. “Why?”

Jinn stopped like he had run into a tree. “Why what?”

“He’s not dead,” Obi-Wan panted, face-down on the floor, praying for his death to be swift. “He isn’t even _dead_.”

He’d thought that the utter silence that followed was a preliminary to the Force welcoming him home. Instead, Windu had marched over to them, torn the deactivated lightsaber hilt out of Qui-Gon’s hand. “Enough. It is done.”

“No,” Jinn had said instantly. “I was against this from the beginning, and now look what you’ve made me _do_ – ”

“Your apprentice, he is,” Yoda said, and Obi-Wan’s face was turned by small, wrinkled hands back into the light. “Accept him, you must. For the sakes of you both.”

*

They are given a week’s leave after Metellos, and Obi-Wan spends most of it asleep. A proper bed, during his and Qui-Gon’s years of wandering the galaxy, has become a treasured luxury, and he intends to make the most of it. It helps, too, with the psychic strain not only of hours of neural interface with a machine the size of a moon, but of the deaths in the Force of millions of innocents. When he wakes, which is rarely, he reaches out with his mind for Qui-Gon through the Ghost Drift; finds the same ragged, healing, over-awed edges, and retreats knowing, thankfully, that he and they are safe.

After four days, chafing at inactivity, he leaves Qui-Gon meditating in their shared rooms in order to oversee a class of Initiates in one-being Zeta jaegers. Hardly bigger than the average-sized Wookiee, the miniature training machines are nimble and fast; those who prove adept at handling them, at acclimating themselves to the interface between living being and artificial intelligence and machinery, will soon move on to the advanced levels of Epsilon and finally Delta; only if chosen as a Padawan will they get the training to handle the building-sized Gammas on their own, then, finally, the two-person Betas, the first test of their ability to join minds with their Masters.

Watching the little hellions zip around the hangar only makes himself want to see his Alpha jaeger again; it is strange, the aesthetic pull of something which he knows is just one hangar away, which seems to know his soul just as well as he knows her circuits. _Living Force_ likes Zetas; she likes how they flutter and fly around her when the Initiates are allowed to fly with her on parade. She likes the resonance of so many mechanical hearts.

“You’ve got that look in your eye again,” says a voice behind him, and Obi-Wan grins before turning, already knowing who has approached. “Good lord. When _are_ you going to shave?”

“The more you ask, the less I’m inclined,” Obi-Wan laughs, and throws a friendly arm around Senator Organa’s shoulders. “Good to see you, Bail. Come to give us more money?”

“I’m trading it for more power over you all,” Bail says, his young face – only just starting to acquire the lines necessary to serve on the Jaeger Defense Oversight Committee – creasing partly with amusement and partly with disdain. “Sorry. The Chancellor has insisted.”

“Finis?”

“Palpatine. How long have you been asleep this time?”

“A long time,” Obi-Wan confesses. “Category Fours don’t come along that often.”

“I’m well aware,” Bail says wryly. “Thank all the gods.”

“ _Master Jinn and Knight Kenobi, please report to the Council_ ,” comes suddenly over the intercom, and both Bail and Obi-Wan look up.

“Duty calls?” Bail says, the corners of his eyes suddenly pinched. “Well. At least it’s not a sighting.”

It’s not, though it might as well be; Qui-Gon is already waiting for Obi-Wan when he reaches the Council chambers, and has been conversing with Mace in hushed tones while the rest of the Masters assemble.

_What’s wrong?_

_Energy fluctuations, possibly a new breach_ , Qui-Gon’s mind murmurs back. _An unusual amount of Dark Side activity. Suspicions that it might be – deliberate?_

Mace turns, and looks at Obi-Wan where he has stopped dead in his tracks. “Knight Kenobi,” he says smoothly. “Have you ever been to Naboo?”

*

It hadn’t been easy, not for a long time.

For the first six months, Qui-Gon seemed to have been perfectly happy to restrict himself to a Gamma jaeger for the sole purpose of making sure Obi-Wan never Drifted with him. Trailing at his heels in a specially-modified, hyperspace-capable Delta had been instructive in its own way, but their first encounter with a kaiju, out on the edges of the Kastolar Sector while backing up a squadron of Warriors who had been sent to negotiate treaty terms with some rogue Hutts, was nearly a disaster – it was only luck that saved them, the fact that the creature was only a Category One and not a match even for a lone master with a tagalong, heartsick Padawan. It hadn’t stopped Obi-Wan losing an arm, though; with the metal appendage crunched and torn away by the kaiju’s jaws, he’d been left screaming, his flesh hanging dead by his side, unresponsive even though it was whole.

It was only on the return journey, with Qui-Gon’s Gamma being towed by transports and the two of them huddled away in a command ship on their way back to the nearest Shatterdome, than Obi-Wan had gotten the first inkling that Qui-Gon cared about anything anymore. The look on his face as he knelt at Obi-Wan’s side and, the Force swirling gently around them, brought life flooding back all the way down into the tips of the Padawan’s fingers, was painful to look at.

Six months after that, they’d killed a Category Two together; he’d learned that Qui-Gon may have been damaged, but he was unbelievably attuned to the universe, and awe-inspiring with it; and Obi-Wan was judged ready to try flying a Gamma of his own for the first time. It was the first test of all of his previous training; almost his first memory, from the crèche, was the stern whispers of his instructors telling him to never, _never_ , try to pilot a solo jaeger you were not ready for, and never _ever_ try to take on the strain of flying a two-pilot jaeger on your own, even in the most desperate need. If you failed in either of those instances, you’d be lucky to be found still in your jaeger, floating dead in space with blood seeping out of your ears. Most of those it had happened to were unlucky, and their jaegers had destroyed planets when they’d crashed.

Obi-Wan survived the Gamma; in fact, he’d thrived. When he was sixteen, finally, Qui-Gon pulled him out of bed early, with a smile both familiar and rare, and brought him to the hangar where the Beta _Living Force_ was kept, and watched Obi-Wan gape.

“Beautiful, isn’t she?” Qui-Gon had murmured, his big hand on Obi-Wan’s skinny shoulder. “Wait until you meet her big sister.”

Drifting was like nothing Obi-Wan had ever felt.

How could – how could one describe the sensation of having the entire _universe_ inside you? Its instrument was the jaeger; its conduit was a man named Qui-Gon Jinn, whose head was full of dark, terrifying things, but always directed, with a single, frightening intensity, towards one of two ends: to understand this life, and to protect those he loved. Obi-Wan had thought that he would not understand what _Qui-Gon_ thought of _him_ , but of course in this he was mistaken – for when two minds became one, how could there be any secrets? He saw himself as purely as he saw his master: a boy from a species of children forced too early into adulthood, too early into war, a favored son of the Force, an uncomplicated, eager, occasionally angry or naïve idealist. _Beta Living_ – her shorter comm code – knew them both, like they knew their bodies, knowing each tendon in their limbs had become one with her wiring.

 _Alpha Living_ was, like Qui-Gon had intimated, everything _Beta Living_ had offered and more. What they achieved in her cockpit, guided by her voice, was nothing less than the total obliteration of the self.

Obi-Wan had understood, finally, what made the stakes of his new life so high. To lose this would be to lose everything he was, and every bit of potential of what he could become. They came close, once or twice; once, battling their first Category Four, they’d floated in dead space for hours, in agony, after killing the beast before they were rescued, and had to be carried into medbays by teams of healers who took days to restore function in both of their legs, which lay scattered in a debris field so wide that those approaching initially thought it was the remnants of a supernova. Other times, the strain of the fight overcame even their training, and _Alpha Living_ turned against them, worming with serrated edges through their minds.

The second lesson Obi-Wan had learned in the crèche stayed with him in those times in particular, as he and Qui-Gon battled for supremacy over the destructive capabilities of their own thoughts. _Don’t chase the rabbit_ , they’d said, over and over and over again. _Don’t chase it, Obi-Wan, don’t go down that hole. You may never climb out of it again_.

Ironically, the one and only time they had a Random Access Brain Impulse Trigger incident, it had been Qui-Gon, not Obi-Wan, who had disappeared.

He’d followed, of course, diving deep, trusting the Force to slow time just enough that they would not be destroyed by the kaiju that was hunting them along the lines of the Corellian Trade Spine; and found himself standing with Qui-Gon on a desolated planet, just standing there with a kaiju looming large above them, and the dark figure of Xanatos in front of it, reaching out, ecstasy on his face.

“I’ve drifted with it, Qui-Gon,” the lost apprentice had whispered, and Obi-Wan grabbed his master by the shoulders, shook him, remembered his own words and how they had dragged Qui-Gon back to a place where he remembered his duty, remembered that he had more to live for.

 _He isn’t even dead,_ he’d screamed. Xanatos is still alive. He abandoned you, but he _isn’t dead_. You are not as destroyed as you think you are. Come home.

“Come back,” he whispered, and Qui-Gon looked at him, and in an instant, they were back in the cockpit with proximity alarms screaming that the kaiju was approaching, and they fought once more.

Coming out of the Drift, once they had reached the height of their Alpha connection, was always heartwrenching. The physical manifestations of their union being broken were something Obi-Wan had learned of, but of course never felt; at eighteen, newly introduced to _Alpha Living_ , he had been left shivering and bereft, twining his arms around Qui-Gon as soon as they were alone and just needing some sort of sense that they were still one. He knew it happened to Beta Padawans, too; that, like the children they still were, they needed the reassurance that their master-parent was still _with_ them somehow, that they were not irrevocably lost.

A year after his Knighting – bestowed upon the successful completion of two years at the head of the Jaeger Corps, and all while amassing a formidable reputation as a solo pilot in his own right – Obi-Wan’s relationship with his co-pilot reached, to outside eyes, its natural conclusion. To fuck minutes after stumbling out of the cockpit, if they were able, was the closest they would come to maintaining what they had had such an intoxicating glimpse of while in the Drift. To do it again the next morning, after dreams full of each other’s thoughts and memories, was not standard operating procedure but it was satisfying. Never enough – nothing else could ever be ‘enough’ – but it was something, and if Obi-Wan had allowed himself the time and space for introspection on the matter he knew what he would call what was happening to them.

He also knew it was the most dangerous thing they’d ever done, or were ever likely to do.

*

Naboo turns out to be surrounded by an invasion army; when the _Living Force_ fleet drops out of hyperspace, it is the most Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan can do to take two Gammas down to the surface and give the young Queen a chance to escape on a ship which is, in turn, quickly crippled. With _Alpha Living_ following serenely in its wake, the Naboo ship lands on Tatooine for repairs and it is there – when Qui-Gon is off among the natives with one of the Queen’s handmaidens, fulfilling what Obi-Wan fondly knows is an insatiable need always to reconnect with other living beings after the solitary flights of the Drift – that Obi-Wan realizes there is something desperately wrong. His skin crawls with it, like the Force itself is afraid.

The fact that the handmaiden comes back to them with far too much understanding in her young eyes, saying that Master Qui-Gon is bringing a young Force-sensitive boy back with him, does nothing to make him feel any better.

It happens, at last; since they are under strict radio silence in order to protect the Queen – who is one and the same with the maiden named Amidala, Obi-Wan is quickly sure of that – there is no warning at all when the massive kaiju, bigger than any Obi-Wan has ever seen and, he suspects, bigger than any anyone has ever seen, looms suddenly over the sands, blocking out both suns.

 _Category Five_ , Obi-Wan thinks wildly, and he is running into the cockpit of _Alpha Living_ before he can think twice about it, overriding protocols with manual inputs as fast as he can to recalibrate her so he can pilot her alone. They have minutes, at most, and the ship is unprotected –

“Stop!” It is Qui-Gon beside him, suddenly, covered in sand, equally as quick as he sheds his tunics and steps into the path of his spiral clamp. The handshake is hurried; the Drift, chaotic, as they turn and give the Naboo ship just enough time to reinstall its hyperdrive before they both leap for the skies, aching from slashes to their gut, to their arms, a reeling blow to the head.

Obi-Wan is left gasping and falling to his knees by the time they disengage from each other. “That – that was – ”

“That thing was sentient,” Qui-Gon says, just as out of breath. “Could you feel it?”

Obi-Wan nods, because he could – he had felt a targeted, detailed malevolence in the Force when they’d fought that kaiju, which is still in the desert and very much alive and gods knew where he’d be going next – they’d have to bend their own rules, have to contact the Temple, had to get teams out scouring the galaxy for this one. “It was almost like it had a fucking _plan_.”

Qui-Gon looks at him sharply, but says nothing. In the following hours, while they put the cockpit to rights and hyperspace is flashing white around them, he speaks of nothing but the boy he had found on Tatooine and who is currently in the Naboo ship ahead of them. Anakin is so strong in the Force that he felt like a beacon, Qui-Gon says, wonderingly, and there is something hard and single-minded in his expression that makes Obi-Wan uneasy when his Master says that the boy must be trained at all costs. He scolds Obi-Wan for attempting the solo Drift; they lapse into silence. For the first time in many years, Obi-Wan is glad of the privacy of his own thoughts.

 _Alpha Living_ shivers, slightly, as though afraid, when Obi-Wan records the new kaiju in their mission logs and the randomized name which the computer gives it is _Maul_.

Back on Naboo, the Queen and Anakin go to the planet’s surface to join a group of Warriors who will help them deal with the invasion of the Trade Federation; Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon’s fate is decided for them when the Category Five looms suddenly out of a forest just outside of Theed, clearly just emerged from a Breach (and there’s something interesting, they will have to tell the Council that some Breaches must be linked) and the Dark Side of the Force swirling around it so strongly it makes _Alpha Living_ keen with distress.

They are winning. It is the hardest fight they have ever had, and neither of them would hesitate in wishing that they were not alone, that they had other jaegers here to back them up, but they are winning. They sing with the Light of the Force, and it looks like it’s enough. Obi-Wan can feel that Qui-Gon is impatient, but over what, he does not have the time to ponder.

And then, just as they think the creature is giving in – they both sport wounds, but its are far more serious – Maul raises a huge winged arm faster than they can keep up with, and its claw comes ripping into the cockpit, writhing, destroying, wreaking havoc through their heads.

The claw wraps itself around Qui-Gon, and pulls, and just like that, he is gone.

Obi-Wan’s mind splits, as though it has been decapitated from his body by a lightsaber. If he were not fastened into his suit, he would fall and never rise again. He could never have imagined that _anything_ could hurt this much – where Qui-Gon had once been, which is _everywhere_ , there is nothing but howling darkness, scattered pieces of what once was them, broken beyond repair. And then – then, _Alpha Living_ , following its programming, transfers every iota of energy she needs and wants to survive onto his shoulders and his alone, and –

He does fall, in the end, and tons of metal falls with him. The kaiju above him gloats, his disgusting, enormous teeth devouring flesh and metal alike. Obi-Wan loses the use of one arm and most of a thigh before he can force himself to open his eyes, and he is screaming, he knows, like he has never done. He jams his working hand into churned earth, brings several trees up with him, uses them to drive splinters into the kaiju’s sides. He has never before been so powerful, he knows, despite being alone, and he will not allow that knowing, evil, cruel look in the kaiju’s eyes to continue. He _will_ not.

 _Saber_ , he thinks, and _Alpha Living_ gives it to him, sparking and damaged as it is, a long, unadulterated beam of green. She is giving up nearly all the power she has left for him to use it; if this does not work, they will not survive.

It does work. Maul falls in two pieces, bisected, twitching and twisting through its death throes for what seems like hours, as _Alpha Living_ finally falls to her knees.

There is blood on Obi-Wan’s face; his own, as it leaks from his eyes. The shock is sending him shaking, his systems are shutting down – _Alpha Living_ ’s computer sounds as though she is choking back tears as she initiates her emergency protocols.

He will be sealed inside a stasis tube, he knows, dimly remembering. He will be sedated. The jaeger will repair herself as best she can, and then, if she is able, or as soon as she is rescued, she will fly back to the Temple. She will send advance notice to the Healers, and to the Council, and to a squad of Warriors assigned to a very specific protection detail: not to protect the bereaved pilot from others, but to protect everyone else from him.

The next thing he remembers is waking up in a sterile room that is a mocking approximation of his former home; there is a bed, a sofa, a table, a window with a view over Coruscant that is made of six-inch-thick glass. The door is locked and Force-shielded; an inhibitor lies on the table, an eerie reminder of his duty as well as his danger.

Obi-Wan will not emerge from this room for two years.

*

**TBC**

*


	3. Illustration

*

[ ](http://i.imgur.com/NARKFip.jpg)

Illustration by [JakartaInn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JakartaInn/pseuds/JakartaInn) ([agarthanguide](http://agarthanguide.tumblr.com/))  
Click for full-size.

*

**TBC**

*


	4. Part 2

*

They call it ‘compatibility.’ As if two minds could be matched like machine parts or circuit boards, like there were cosmic puzzle pieces which, once snapped together, would never sensibly be separated. You are compatible. Drift-Compatible. Your neurons like each other. It’s as simple as that.

How strange, Obi-Wan finds himself thinking – once he is coherent enough to think, once he has stopped panicking and sobbing and screaming enough to get the few hours of sleep he needs to be _able_ to think – how strange, that something so simple could have such messy, complicated, agonizing consequences.

Time loses much of its meaning, in those early days, as he tries desperately to think on these sorts of abstract, distant, unknowable questions in order to distract himself from the howling maelstrom that is Qui-Gon’s loss. It rockets around his mind and body, has him reaching out with hands and the Force for something which will never come back.

In what he thinks – he will never be sure – is his second week of Isolation, the pain in his head comes to such a crescendo that when he flails out an arm against the phantom that torments him, the glass of his window shatters into smithereens. He has no idea how long he stands in its wreckage, staring out at Coruscant far below him and contemplating how long it would take him to fall, before he feels the telltale prick in his neck of sedation, brought by a jailer unseen. When he wakes up again, the window has been reinstalled – or perhaps he has simply been taken to a different room, they must all be the same – and there is a freshly-painted surveillance droid sitting quietly in one corner which will not speak to Obi-Wan no matter how long he rambles, nor how hard he begs.

Emerging from it – from the nightmares of Xanatos and teeth as long as krayt dragons and of the dreadful moment of severance – is such a gradual process that he only recognizes its landmarks in retrospect. There is a day when he wakes and realizes that he did not dream. There is a day when he thinks, simply, that he is glad to see the sun. There is a day when he rubs a hand over his matted scalp and roughshod beard – both long now, far too long – and thinks that perhaps, today, he will ask the fresher (voice-activated, no knobs, no dials, no instruments) for water rather than sonic.

There is a day when he wakes groggily, knowing that once again, he has been the beneficiary of a silent Healer visitor with a needle, to find that he has been moved. He has two rooms, now – the bedroom and a living space with a tiny, sad excuse for a kitchen in one corner. There is nothing available to him to use but a kettle – all of his meals simply appear, quietly, just inside the Force-shielded door, as they have done since the beginning, when he wouldn’t touch a bite – but that is still, suddenly, an unbelievable privilege. He’s come up in the world, he thinks to himself as he huddles, exhausted, on the sofa with a cup of cooling tea in his hands, if the Council thought he could be trusted around boiling water.

There is a balcony, too, though when he goes out onto it it’s like he can’t sense or see anything in any direction – he can’t guess where in the Temple he is being kept. It’s like he lives suspended, in every way possible.

Another step taken: he sits on the balcony in sunset air, closes his eyes, and attempts to meditate. What comes back is a flood of feeling so intense that he gives into the shame of it almost immediately, curling up and weeping at the self- _awareness_ of what has happened.

And then another few months have passed, and Obi-Wan looks out over Coruscant one mid-morning to see Quinlan Vos on the other side of his door, tapping gently at the glass.

“Hey, dude,” the Kiffar says, his eyes glowing golden. He looks Obi-Wan up and down, reaches out, grabs hold of Obi-Wan’s beard, tugs, and giggles. “Not a good look, man.”

It is from Vos that he learns that he has been alone for eighteen months.

This is also when he remembers, every time the other Knight visits him, clambering up onto the balcony from gods only knew where – and thank the gods, too, that the surveillance droid is gone, quietly disappeared a few weeks back – that he is not the only one struggling with the aftereffects. Quinlan is another Qui-Gon, in some respects, though his parting from his master Tholme had been somewhat mutual; it shows, though, in Vos’s sharp smile, in his dark-circled eyes, in his rambling conversations, full of visions and prophecies and booming laughter, that he is suffering.

“Why do you keep coming here?” Obi-Wan asks, once, in a more-lucid-than-usual moment, when they are both on his bed, sitting cross-legged in opposite corners as though they can deny the pull of gravity.

“Dunno, man. Help comes in the strangest of forms.”

“Am I helping you?”

“Not sure yet.”

They sleep curled into one another, but never touch. Vos is never still there when Obi-Wan wakes.

On a day which not particularly remarkable at all, Obi-Wan slips into meditation in the morning and, to his surprise, does not emerge again until night is falling. The sight of stars breaking through Coruscant’s light- and smog-polluted sky takes his breath away, makes tears spark in the corners of his eyes. The Force is pooling around him, eddying, dancing at his touch.

He stands, shakily, and, supporting himself along a wall, finally comes to rest standing in the middle of his living room, staring at his ever-locked door.

“Master Yoda,” he says into thin air, as clearly as he can manage. “I should like a razor, if you please. I’ve had enough of looking like a Wookiee.”

He goes to his bed, falls onto it like a dead man, and is asleep within seconds. He dreams of Qui-Gon, of his master’s smile, and of a small boy with sun-kissed hair who is close, he realizes, so close, and shines so brightly he could rival a star.

The next morning, he can tell as soon as he wakes that the shields on his door have been dropped. A box waits at his feet, filled with fresh tunics, new boots, a billowing cloak; there is a mirror newly-installed into his fresher, and the sight of himself nearly makes him run screaming before he finds the vibroblade razor. Chopping off his shoulder-length hair into something much shorter and more dignified is but the work of a moment; he takes rather more time mowing down the caveman beard into something respectable. He could pass for thirty-five, he thinks, when he is finished; he certainly feels older than is, and suspects he always will.

It takes him a few hours of dull nervousness before he gathers the courage – with the hood of his cloak pulled well forward to obscure as much of his face as possible – to walk to the door and pull it open. For a moment, he thinks the corridor outside is empty; but then, as though summoned, they begin to appear. A small squad of warrior Jedi from each direction, lightsabers in cautious hands; Mace, sleeves folded quietly before him; Yoda, in his hoverchair, silent and swift.

Yoda approaches closest, and Obi-Wan takes a step forward, bows his head. “Master,” he says, and coughs, his voice still hoarse with disuse despite Quinlan’s visits. “I am sorry to have taken so long.”

“No,” Yoda says instantly, and holds out a wrinkled hand which Obi-Wan takes with a reverence he had not expected to feel. “No, Obi-Wan. Disappointed us, you have not. Gravely injured, you were, and time, you needed.”

“Time, I got,” Obi-Wan says ruefully. “Two years?”

“Near enough,” Mace says as he joins them – his hands on Obi-Wan’s shoulders are as firm a grounding as Obi-Wan has felt for a long time. “Welcome back, Master Kenobi.”

Obi-Wan raises a heartfelt eyebrow. “Master?”

Mace’s lips quirk in a mockery of a smile. “A survival of this kind usually merits a promotion.”

“Gods, spare me.”

“Calm, you are,” Yoda says, with an approving nod.

“But not at peace, Master.”

“Peace,” Yoda says, with a quick, not-quite-dismissive wave of a hand. “Seek it, we all do. That search is never ended. But calm, you are,” he says again, more slowly. “And mend, you will.”

Obi-Wan’s long, solitary walks around the Temple in those next few, quiet, precious days, do not go unnoticed. He knows he is being followed; knows that Yoda and the Council are no doubt having him monitored, and feels no resentment at it. Anonymous as possible and muting his presence in the Force – for, truth be told, he has not yet dared to fully open himself up to it again – he observes a class or two where younglings are sparring with lightsabers, walks through the gardens, allows Healers to silently take their tests and measurements and then scold him about the importance of regaining the weight he has lost.

After a week, when he is resting in his rooms – he has been reassigned to normal quarters, but thankfully not the ones he and Qui-Gon had shared – a beautiful green and tattooed head snakes around his doorway, and something in Luminara’s smile tells him he will not be able to fend her off.

“I’ve been flying solo missions, when not working at the Temple,” she says as they walk, taking a long, circumspect, but clearly well-planned path towards the hangars. “I do so enjoy designing. It’s like – well, it’s what I imagine giving birth must feel like, Master Kenobi. They are each such different creatures.”

“Don’t call me that,” he grouches good-naturedly, patting her hand where it rests on his arm. “Or I’ll start calling you Knight. And anyway, you can’t be far off, surely.”

“No, I’m not,” she says confidently, giving him a look full of determined mischief. “In fact, I’ve heard that if my latest project is a success, my rank is all but guaranteed.”

The first part of Luminara’s said project is waiting for him in a small room off of hangar 6, in a dark, glittering blue which makes Obi-Wan’s eyes widen and his stomach clench. When she uses the Force to manipulate the pieces of armor into the perfect fit around him, Luminara almost looks overcome.

“What do you think?” she whispers, and leads him by a metal-clad hand into the empty, silent hangar beyond. The Force hits Obi-Wan hard in the gut, takes away his breath, leaves him gasping.

She is different; her shape is sleeker and smaller, her color utterly changed, in matching tones of blue with rich gold at her seams, but he can still feel her. Somewhere in the darkness, _Living Force_ looms above them, reborn.

“Has she been named yet?” he stammers, when he regains the ability to think.

“It was Master Yoda’s idea for you,” Luminara says gently. “ _Hope of the Force_. This is _Alpha Hope_.” The Mirialan Jedi smiles, suddenly, bright and happy. “I think she likes you.”

“And I think, _Master_ Unduli,” Obi-Wan says slowly, feeling the Force settle around him, smothering and yet buoyant, “that you’d better get a few more of those suits made up.”

Three days later, he has forgotten all about the joy of that short, precious moment. His lightsaber feels heavy in his hands, his palms are sweating. Everything in his being is screaming at him to turn around, damn the Force and its assurances.

He cannot do this. To do this would be to turn his back on everything he has tried for so long to retain. Taking a Padawan feels like a betrayal of each and every remnant of Qui-Gon that still resides in his soul.

He looks to Mace just before they enter the Choosing room, grabs the other Master’s wrist and is too afraid to be ashamed at how hard he is shaking. “Please,” he whispers. “Don’t let me kill anyone.”

“You think you’re the first Bereaved to ask me that, Kenobi?” Windu says, low and hard, his face set in rigid lines. “I make no promises.”

Thankfully – _thank the Force, thank all the gods_ – it never comes to that, because from the moment Obi-Wan steps inside, there is only one presence he is aware of.

Gods, he knows what Qui-Gon meant, now. The child is _terrifying_. He comes on in large, hacking swings, full of anxious energy, of frightening intelligence. Every time Obi-Wan reassures himself that he is a Master and well in control of himself, Anakin Skywalker does something unexpected; every time they reel away from each other, sporting fresh wounds, it is as if they are remaking and rebreaking a bond. Obi-Wan Kenobi is twenty-five years old; Anakin Skywalker, he knows – he senses – is eleven, and they have known each other all of their lives.

Obi-Wan lets out a bark of something approaching laughter, and, relieved beyond words, drops his guard; startled and already halfway through his thrust, the boy scores a hit which does rather more damage than he was supposed to, and everything goes a bit white and hazy. The next thing Obi-Wan knows is waking up in the Halls of Healing in the dead of night, with an exhausted, vibrating little bundle of Padawan curled up on the bed beside him.

“You’re awake!” Anakin gasps, and reaches out in the darkness for Obi-Wan’s face before remembering himself and snatching his hands back. “A-are you alright? Master Kenobi?”

“Fine,” Obi-Wan sighs, starting to stretch and only remembering why he can’t a moment later, as his pierced-through shoulder protests. “Gah. Got good aim, haven’t you?”

“The best,” Anakin says tremulously, and bursts into a radiant smile when Obi-Wan can’t help but laugh again.

Anakin Skywalker is indeed eleven years old. He is an expert mechanic, and has worked briefly alongside several designers, fascinated by the inner workings of the machines he will one day fly. He is an indifferent swordsman and scholar, but he is the first in generations to have piloted a Gamma before being Chosen, and with ease at that. He is small for his age, not yet starting to grow in leaps and bounds, but strong; one cannot survive being a slave on a planet like Tatooine and be weak.

“You know, it’s funny,” the boy yawns, when it is not quite dawn and they are both half-asleep. “Sometimes, I think I miss it. I miss my mom, that’s for sure.” He pauses, and tucks his head into Obi-Wan’s shoulder with a sigh. “Do you miss things, Master?”

“Many things,” Obi-Wan murmurs, as he, too, gives in to sleep. “Everything.”

 _But_ , he thinks as he slips away, _perhaps I have found it again._

*

**TBC**

*


	5. Part 3

*

Nine years with Anakin pass so quickly that Obi-Wan barely has a chance to catch his breath and consider what, exactly, it is he is doing.

It hadn’t been easy, at first; nothing about it could be. With Obi-Wan still grieving and Anakin sparkling far beyond the expected potential of his age, their training in the Temple was never going to be enough. They first Drift together in _Beta Hope_ when Anakin is only fourteen, and after patiently sorting through the maelstrom of teenage upheavel that lies on the surfaces of Anakin’s memories, what Obi-Wan finds underneath is blazing, overwhelming, chaotic light that would easily be enough to drown him if he were to let it.

Perhaps the most important lesson he learns in all of these years is that which is handed to him directly after that first Drift; when, as they recede from each other and Obi-Wan accepts, with a sigh of equanimity, the separateness he had grown so unfortunately used to, he unexpectedly finds himself with an armful of sobbing Padawan who hasn’t spent years alone.

“Master,” Anakin cries. “I’m so _sorry_ , I didn’t _know_ , and they’re _mine_ now too and it _hurts_ – ”

In retrospect, it will alarm Obi-Wan that he had apparently been so distant from the world that it never occurred to him that he would still be _needed_. He promises himself and Anakin, silently, right then, as he sweeps the boy into his shoulder and holds him close, that he will always be there, for his apprentice and for the duty embodied in his jaegers; it is a promise he will refer back to many times in the following weeks and months, as he tells himself that this could be wonderful, this could be the start of something new.

They learn (or re-learn, in Obi-Wan’s case), on average, six katas a year. The transition to _Alpha Hope_ , when Anakin is fifteen, is something long yearned-for, and which leaves them both hyperactive and probably unhealthily close for weeks. Sometimes, most often when he is waking from sleep, Obi-Wan senses his apprentice’s mind close to his even outside of the Drift or Ghost Drift, eager for completion; the lack of privacy between them seems little obstacle, however, when it engenders such a perfect working relationship. Obi-Wan is stern, but no advice nor censure can exist in a jaeger; there are no secrets, no unforgiven hurts, no resentments possible.

When he is sixteen, Anakin comes to Obi-Wan blushing hard, as though hoping to make a father proud, and mumbles that he has invented a new Artificial Intelligence and Communications System for _Alpha Hope_. He has named it R2, and its voice is charm itself, cheeky and pert and wild, so like Anakin himself that even if it were not a marked improvement on every system preceding it Obi-Wan would have accepted it without pause. Anakin adapts various spinoffs of the software for the rest of their burgeoning fleet; when they pilot alone, Obi-Wan favors a system called R2-4 which seems to anticipate his every need and thought.

The kaiju keep coming. They always come. They emerge out of systems yet uncharted, or into the atmosphere of Coruscant itself; they bring the Dark Side with them whether they are Fours, destroying moons with a blast of fire, or piddling Ones easily skewered by a Gamma’s blade. When Anakin is thirteen, and Obi-Wan is, at twenty-seven, still piloting dozens of solo missions a year, Quinlan Vos comes to the Council for the first time with his theory – gleaned from his communication with a kaiju corpse, its memories seared into his mind – that the kaiju that appear in the galaxy are searching for something. They are searching for some _one_ , in fact – they are searching for a Sith to serve.

The Council does not believe him.

When Anakin is eighteen, and Obi-Wan is, at thirty-two, finally starting to catch up with the faint grey hairs and lines in his face that were scored upon him too young, there come the first rumblings of Separatist discontent. Jaeger technology, so long sequestered and proprietary, has become common property with alarming speed in the previous twenty years; in their devastation, and the lack of explanation from the Senate and the Jaeger Defense Oversight Committee as to why the kaiju attacks become ever more frequent and the Jedi Corps ever more thinly-stretched, systems across the galaxy are wondering whether they could do better defending themselves.

Obi-Wan has no quarrel with their despair. Their violence, however, he cannot abide.

The interference of politicians of all stripes, so long tolerated but ever more intrusive, is, for a while, simply another injustice to be endured for their well-meaning. Bail Organa has grown tall and powerful since he and Obi-Wan were teenagers together, both finding their way in Coruscant’s various corridors of power; Obi-Wan always with the distant, disdainful (whether truly felt or otherwise) aloofness of a warrior, while Bail has amassed a reputation as a sleek, pretty bird of prey, always accommodating and abruptly and efficiently grasping. His elevation to JDOC’s Executive Board feels natural; his condescension and genuine regard for the Jedi and their sacrifices, refreshing.

When Anakin is nineteen, rumors start to swirl in the Temple after news, distorted and probably full of half-truths, reaches it that, somewhere in the Outer Rim, a Jedi who lost her master has turned to the Dark, and drifted with a kaiju. When he is brought into the Council Chamber on a day not soon after in his capacity as head of the active Corps, with Anakin at his shoulder, Obi-Wan finds himself speaking without forethought.

“There was a memory,” he begins, haltingly, and tells them of Xanatos standing in that devastated field reaching out into a kaiju’s mouth, of the ecstasy on his face, of the energy and danger and corruption of the light.

“Qui-Gon’s memory, this was?” Yoda asks, quietly.

“Yes, Master.”

“And you believe it to be real,” Mace says rather than asks, his tone making it clear that he is not prepared to accept this possibility.

Obi-Wan bristles, and, rarely, it is Anakin’s mind which reaches out and calms him rather than the other way around. “I saw this when retrieving Master Jinn from a R.A.B.I.T. It was no accident. It was also no fabrication.”

The Council, disarmed by his candor but still with very little information, subsides into silence again. In the meantime, Anakin turns twenty, and Senator Padme Amidala returns to Coruscant from Naboo.

Anakin will tell Obi-Wan nothing of why he sleeps so badly. When Obi-Wan asks, he says simply that he has nightmares. When they Drift, Obi-Wan does not pry – there is a difference between the act of psychic union and the violence of psychic overdetermination, after all, and his Padawan is old enough – and close enough to knighthood, despite his growing arrogance and overconfidence as he is sent on ever more missions on his own as Obi-Wan is kept busy – to have a right to his own thoughts.

Anakin is totally closed off from him for the first time since they met when they are in Senator Amidala’s office, being offered as protection; their Zeta jaegers, which encase each of them to within a half inch of their skin, are apparently prized far more than any other bodyguard on offer.

“Be mindful of your thoughts,” Obi-Wan says quietly, once, and Anakin tears his gaze away from the former Queen for just long enough for his disgust to reach his eyes.

“That’s what I _am_ doing,” he says sullenly, dark circles beneath his eyes, and Obi-Wan remains silent.

Obi-Wan’s Zeta becomes a casualty of a bounty hunter’s bullet as he chases the device that attempts to end Padme’s life; it disintegrates as he falls, and he wrenches its remnants away from him, preferring in the end to feel some semblance of air on his face if he is to die. He doesn’t, of course, as Anakin, in his own perfectly-tailored, speed-oriented Zeta falls with him and eventually wrenches them both up into a holding pattern; from there, Obi-Wan’s path is determined by the sight of a tall, metal-clad figure on a rooftop which jets away from them as soon as it is spotted, gleaming in the dark.

Arriving at Kamino produces a surprise far beyond anything he has so far experienced on this strange journey that started in Senator Amidala’s office. It hits him in the chest as soon as they break into the atmosphere, and R2-4 whistles long and low with surprise: the entire _planet_ is humming with the Living Force, as though the water that covers its surface is full of life down to the last millimeter. It leaves Obi-Wan briefly breathless and gasping, overwhelmed by the pulsing psychic lights he can feel below. It feels like all the Force-sensitive children who have ever existed in the universe have been gathered together and are waiting for him, welcoming him home with curiosity and bright, raucous laughter.

It takes a moment to compose himself before is able to step out of the cockpit, with R2-4 shutting _Gamma Hope_ down into a watchful hibernation, and advance to meet the tall, willowy forms of the Kaminoans come to greet him, all of whom hum with what sounds like contentedness to see the jaeger gracefully settling itself down on the landing platform. They speak of friendship, and with admiration for his machine – and then they ask whether he would like to inspect his army.

“ _Army?_ ”

“Yes. We believe you will find that Master Sifo-Dyas’ instructions have been followed to the letter.”

Long corridors, bright lights; there are creatures here, in stasis chambers not much larger than a full-grown man, thousands of them. These are the Force-lights he had sensed, but below that light –

Below it, Obi-Wan doesn’t sense life. Not life as he has always understood it, at least; and for the first time since he landed, he is afraid rather than puzzled.

They lead him into a blank, empty white room – standing in the middle of it is a miniature jaeger, roughly the same dimensions as a Zeta, barely different from a training machine used by Jedi children for as long as they are small enough to fit into one. It is clad in white and orange armor, its delicate metal hands at rest at its sides. Beneath its helmet, where a cockpit would be on an Alpha, there is something distant and blurred that looks like a face.

One of the Kaminoans crosses over to it, and lays a long finger on some switch – and suddenly, the Force leaps into life, and the Thing opens its eyes.

“Hello,” the jaeger says politely, and Obi-Wan simply stands amazed.

_Oh, gods._

_What have they **done?**_

“Hello,” he replies, and knows his calm is a lie. “What is your name?”

“I am CC-2224,” the jaeger says, its head tilting slightly to the side. Beneath the helmet-glass, the specter of the man stays still, its eyes wide open and its mouth unmoving. “Are you to be my commanding officer, sir?”

“I don’t know,” Obi-Wan says, feeling the truth of each syllable in more ways than one. “CC-2224 is quite a mouthful.”

“It is the name I am given, sir.”

“Do you choose no other?”

Behind him, one of the Kaminoans fidgets, but whether with curiosity or disquiet Obi-Wan cannot tell.

“My chosen name is Cody, sir. I have received ARC training and am rated to engage up to Category Fours.”

“Thank you,” Obi-Wan murmurs. He bows, and the jaeger nods, and falls silent.

He cannot hide his confusion as he turns, and now he can see very well that the Kaminoans are disturbed by his interaction with the machine. “What sort of army are you building here, exactly?” he asks, as precisely as he can manage.

“Master Sifo-Dyas was quite specific,” the President sniffs. “He brought us the sentient jaeger, and we – ”

“The sentient _what?_ ”

The machine that calls itself Jango Fett _is_ a Zeta jaeger of some description – but not Jedi-issue, and of no type or company make that Obi-Wan can identify on sight. Its helmet is empty, its innards presumably likewise, and Obi-Wan cannot _imagine_ what it must have been like – when that sudden moment must have come, who knows how long ago, when, somehow, somewhere, the Force alighted on its head of its own account (or perhaps the machine itself evolved, a terrifying thought yet supported by the droid life which swarms on Coruscant and elsewhere) and endowed it with consciousness. Jango speaks. He thinks. He knows that Obi-Wan is itching to take him, to tear him apart and examine each and every socket and circuitry board, to discover just what it is that has endowed him with life.

Obi-Wan knows, just as well, that he cannot do any of that. And so he tries to talk to it, rather than fight, and when they _do_ eventually fight he finds himself bewildered and overwhelmed by the idea that if his lightsaber were to cut into this metal, it would be as painful and damaging as if it tore into flesh, and he loses, and Jango Fett, once a machine, now a bounty hunter, roars off into Kaminoan skies heavy with rain and thunder.

He chases Jango’s ship to Geonosis, where he spares a moment to send a message which he can only hope will reach Anakin, and then the Council. _We’re in deep trouble_ , he says, though he doesn’t use those words. _The Separatists have the droid factories. The assassin lives. I am alone._

_We have created Force-sensitive beings, and will consider them our servants._

Later, much later, he will (perhaps) allow himself the dreadful luxury of musing on just how far the Jedi themselves, flesh and blood rather than machine, have dragged themselves and the Force into servitude; not now, though, not when he is suddenly under attack and his run back to his jaeger is abruptly halted by the tackle of destroyer droids that pin his legs to the earth.

The Separatist forces blow up his _Gamma Hope_ while he can do nothing but watch, and her shrieks stab into him like knives. The next moment, the pain is different, and he opens his eyes to the insidious caress of Dooku’s hand on his leg as he hangs suspended, Force lightning searing along his veins. It has been so long since he last felt true physical pain, rather than the psychic extension of a jaeger’s agony, that he finds himself weak in the face of it; Dooku, surprised, must leave him unharmed overnight before he is capable of speech.

The fallen Jedi Lord’s insinuation that there is a Sith at the heart of the Senate makes so much sense it makes Obi-Wan nauseous. Swallowing his fear, he asks the Force to center him; in denying Dooku the alliance he seeks, he only earns more punishment, and does not sleep while the electricity keeping him bound sparks along his skin.

By the time he is hauled out into the arena to die, all he feels is that he is very small, and vulnerable, and the phantom imprint and reach of his jaeger-body is long gone. The shock of seeing Anakin and Padme – gods, he would have spared her this, knows she is capable but never wanted this for either of them – revives him long enough to defeat his would-be devourer, but little more.

The coming of the Clone Jaegers feels apocalyptic, like the entire galaxy has tilted on some universal axis.

“Come on,” Anakin yells, and once he has seen Padme safely delivered to a ship headed away from the quickly-materializing front, he drags Obi-Wan at a half-run to _Alpha Hope_ – she has been brought with the growing fleet, carefully maintained and prepared, and he practically shoves Obi-Wan into his spinal clamp, his eyes wide with battle fury. “Dooku’s getting away!”

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan chokes out, for he has seen, as Anakin fiddles with instruments and their legs take their first steps through the rush of the Drift – Obi-Wan’s feet feel like lead, like he is indeed lifting tons on each tendon – exactly where Dooku is. “Anakin, look – ”

Dooku is in front of them, right in front of them on the dusty Geonosian plain, and yet it’s not Dooku at all. It’s a kaiju, enormous, at least a Category Four, and there Dooku stands in the hollow of its eye with his feet planted firmly in its flesh, serene, one hand raised, the fact of their union evidenced in the roil of the Dark Side, roiling and black all around them.

It’s a hell of a way to find out that all of their worst fears about kaiju-Sith partnerships have been made real.

Obi-Wan is exhausted, the battle in the arena and the aftermath of his torture making _Alpha Hope’s_ sheet metal tremble, and Anakin can feel it, and that’s when the boy makes the worst mistake of his life.

“I’ll handle this,” he snaps through the comms, and despite himself Obi-Wan’s head rears up as he feels Anakin’s mind flooding through his, probing, seeking to support, eager to take. “Just let me – ”

“Anakin, no,” Obi-Wan roars, trying to flail out a hand and finding he can’t, as Anakin’s control runs like wildfire through his veins and moves his limbs for him. “ _No –_ ”

The kaiju is too quick. With Anakin reeling from the power of _Alpha Hope’s_ systems snatching at him and Obi-Wan at their combined mercy, it is altogether too easy – the cockpit disintegrates around them under a hail of claws and teeth, glass shattering, durasteel beams snapping like twigs, R2’s shrieking chirps abruptly silenced. Obi-Wan blacks out as something smashes him forward out of his mounting, but only for a moment, and wakes to find himself sprawled and pinned in the still-falling wreckage with Anakin lying on top of him, and there is blood everywhere, and screaming, and Anakin has no right arm.

Obi-Wan chases the rabbit so fast it is a wonder he doesn’t take the galaxy with him.

He is alone, as Maul rears up an enormous claw; again and again and again, he watches Qui-Gon Jinn taken. Again, and again, and again, he keeps thinking that this time, _this time_ , one of them will turn just far enough that he can catch sight of Qui-Gon’s eyes for a final moment.

He battles Maul in darkness. He fights it in blazing sun. He draws his saber, green, blue, bisecting, disemboweling, decapitating. He tries, again, and again, and –

Nothing stops the claw from taking what was his. He never gets that one last glimpse –

“Hm,” Yoda says, gruff and low. “What you see each time you close your eyes, this is?”

Obi-Wan takes a deep, hoarse breath. His 23-year-old body flexes, screams, witnesses death once more, except this time, a little green figure stands next to him as his world falls apart. “Yes, Master.”

“Sorry for it, I am,” Yoda says, sadness wrinkling every line of his face as he watches Qui-Gon’s body fall. “But needed, you are.”

“I’m needed _here_ ,” Obi-Wan says, his teeth gritted so hard his jaw has gone stiff.

Someone else is calling him. They sound very young, very alone, and very afraid.

“Do the right thing, you will,” Yoda says with certainty, and with a watery gasp, Obi-Wan tears his eyes away from his grief and looks up into the sky, which rushes in to meet him.

He wakes with Anakin’s blood on his face, and Dooku’s kaiju’s massive, taloned hand descending to crush them. He wraps his arms and legs around Anakin, faster than a thought, and, as Anakin screams again, throws up a hand. The Force shrieks around him, strengthening metal and solidifying the air: the claws scrabble, the beast hisses and bellows, but the Force-shield holds. Obi-Wan’s body is a pure conduit, his mind ablaze, so much so that his Self feels distant; he sees, as though from a great height, his other arm wrap itself tighter around his Padawan’s shoulder, his hand on Anakin’s cheek.

“Hush,” he hears himself whisper. “It is all right.”

After what feels like a year – in reality it has probably only been seconds – two jaegers barrel into view and Dooku retreats before the twin threats of Masters Yoda and Windu in their Gammas of swamp-green and thistle-purple, newly-refurbished and gloriously precise. They are followed by a veritable swarm of flying Zeta jaegers, brilliant white and splashed with red, orange, and blue, so bright Obi-Wan’s eyes ache at the sight of them.

One of them lands; it approaches quickly, metal feet crunching through the ruins of _Alpha Hope’s_ cockpit until it reaches them. Beneath its helmet, there is a familiar bland, perfect, unmoving face.

“Sir,” it says, and Anakin lets out a wordless sob. “Sir, it’s me. CC-2224. May I be of assistance?”

“Yes, Cody,” Obi-Wan rasps, and feels himself slipping under and out of himself, to a place warm and dark and blissfully empty. “Yes, I rather think you can.”

*

**TBC**

*


	6. Part 4

*

The war overtakes them quickly, but still at a pre-determined pace. The lives of the Jedi Corps become dictated, more than ever before, by the speed of machines: the machines which build jaegers, the machines which can interpret the design of geniuses and put it into practice in metal, concrete, wiring and paint. Beings, workers, are sent to them with ever-increasing frequency, turning the Temple into a hubbub of strangers; the presence of the clone-jaegers, so alien and so obviously warranting respect, causes rumblings of commotion and protest and fear for weeks.

It takes Obi-Wan weeks to feel capable of going out into the new field of battle again, that is for sure, and Anakin is no better. Their rehabilitation continues at the same careful, delicate pace of _Alpha Hope_ herself – determined to save her, Luminara works through nights and entire cycles without sleep, searching in her ruins for her core, and when she finds it its light in the Force is guttering. Obi-Wan himself spends many days with it, as Anakin slowly gets used to his new arm and his hair grows long and ragged, coaxing that small flame into life – imbuing it and shoring up its remembrance of him, of them, of its duty, that spark of obligation that, like Obi-Wan himself, it feels more strongly than any other impulse.

Their first drift after Geonosis in _Alpha Hope’s_ reconstructed cockpit is only a test run – they don’t even break out of Coruscant’s atmosphere – but it is charged with things both deep and dangerous that take Obi-Wan’s breath away. Anakin is clumsy and frustrated with the right side of his body, still, and therefore so is the jaeger; Obi-Wan feels that he is tired already, so tired, at the prospect of what will come that his participation feels distant, incomplete.

Anakin is angry, flooded with the fury of the self-righteous, eager to set things right. It seeps through the Drift and into Obi-Wan as they land back in their hangar, and when they return to their quarters it feels inevitable, suddenly, that he finds himself in Anakin’s arms – that his Padawan, shaking like a tree in a hurricane, presses their mouths and bodies fiercely together, his mind surging even into the places it is not wanted.

He is not thinking of Obi-Wan, and it is that, more than anything, that gives Obi-Wan the strength to put his hands on Anakin’s shoulders, to whisper Anakin’s name even as his hands clutch for more and make it clear, putting all the desperation he has into his voice, that if this is not about _them_ and them alone then they are not going to do it.

Anakin wrenches away from him, his hands digging painfully into Obi-Wan’s sides. His eyes narrow. He says nothing; he merely storms away, his thoughts closed off, leaving Obi-Wan to quietly retreat and sit in meditation for many hours, re-aligning himself in a place where he does not rely on the existence of any Other to maintain what is his.

The next day, he flies with a full fleet of _Hope_ jaegers to the war, surrounded by ships specially built to hold his Battalions of Clone Jaegers; when he is asked if he has a preference as to his clone commander, there is only one name he knows well enough to give, and he and Cody bow quietly to each other before embarking. He has never trusted any machine quite like this, he realizes, during the long hours of hyperspace travel that follow – never, at least, since he first flew _Alpha Hope_.

In the meantime, the word flying around the Temple is that Knight Skywalker is being built a jaeger fleet of his own, and the news is both a relief and a source of deep, happy pride for his master. It is eventually named _Promise of the Force_ ; when Anakin and his fleet warps out to join Obi-Wan in the Outer Rim at Christophsis a few months later, the new Alpha jaeger is resplendent in deep reds and blacks, bulky, promising muscle and surprising observers with its matching, sinewy speed. It is, in a word, perfect.

Anakin has also brought along a Padawan – a surprise, certainly, but one that does not make Obi-Wan mourn for what could have been. He has no complaints, though Anakin has many; he has realized, after all, that the war is going to make martyrs of the Corps, that they are likely to die in greater numbers and faster than ever before, and that they will not have the luxury of being perfectly matched in their minds. After their first few joint missions Anakin, thankfully, seems to agree.

“It’s so strange,” he says to Obi-Wan, looking fondly over the mess towards where Ahsoka is getting to know some of the clones; she is bright and fierce and treats them as brothers, though many of them, still exploring their newly-made, mechanical minds, seem bewildered by the concept. “It’s as though our heads are – compartmentalized. As though we know, instinctually, how to let go of the parts we need to work the jaeger, and keep close hold of the rest.”

“Not such a bad thing, perhaps,” Obi-Wan replies thoughtfully, sipping at his caff. “When we all have such important things to protect.”

Anakin looks at him sharply, but does not argue; his muttered, familiar grumble about inscrutability and the uselessness of metaphor is fond, and the clamp of his hand on Obi-Wan’s shoulder speaks of support and certainty rather than censure.

Obi-Wan himself drifts with Ahsoka not long after, when Anakin is on patrol in his Delta and there is no time to wait for him to take out the Category Four which appears in Christophsis’s atmosphere – her mind is as small, tenacious, and lithe as her person, and while he senses immediately that she is overawed by the immense depths his own presence has accumulated over the years, she plunges into it without fear. Their eventual match rating is 88% - not as good as the 95% she and Anakin eventually reach after three months of working together, but close enough, and certainly good enough to take _Alpha Hope_ into the field firing on all cylinders, her synapses sparking with happy curiosity at her new tenant and eager to please them both.

The war is long. It is unending. It screeches with the tear of metals and the roars of indomitable beasts, of planets physically ripped in half along non-existent seams. Obi-Wan feels the edges of his own mind growing ragged, retreating, being worn down with the news of every death, of every latest atrocity. His clone jaegers are torn to shreds, and are replaced with consciousnesses similar, but never the same – never truly replicable, and so their loss is as real, of course, as any other. Cody’s armor grows battered.

He drifts with Quinlan Vos, once, when need demands it, and spends a night in his bed as they are meant to be, still shivering with the revelation of the two of them as one. By morning, they are separate again, and do not even take the trouble to say any sort of meaningful goodbye.

He fights a fallen half-Jedi whose relationship with the Dark is voracious and yet curious, uncultured, passionate, who uses it like a weapon of assault and seduction at once, sinuously. Flying a solo mission in _Delta Hope_ , Obi-Wan finds himself completely confounded by the dual creature which, he learns later, is called Asajj Ventress; the kaiju she travels with disappears from the galactic radar after the fourth time they fight each other to a standstill, and he suspects that it has since died, leaving her alone and doing gods-only-know what. He is overcome with a pity he does not wish to name.

They lose Adi Gallia, her jaeger left falling in shattered pieces by a Category Five who looks curiously like Maul – the thought that any of these creatures have familial ties makes Obi-Wan briefly ill, and he consciously refuses to think on it further.

And then there is the day he and his battalion come out of lightspeed and into orbit around a mostly-unknown planet called Mortis, and emerge into chaos. Anakin and Ahsoka and their clone jaegers have been here for hours, and for what becomes immediately obvious – there is debris littering the atmosphere, luminescent kaiju innards and hunks of durasteel alike, and when Obi-Wan lands his Delta and jumps out onto the gloomy planet’s surface he surges forward at a run. He can feel Anakin’s mind all around him, warping and flexing and _tainted_ , and when he skids to a halt in the meager medbay of the Open Circle Fleet’s largest troop carrier (they need workshops, after all, far more often than they need sickbeds), he finds Ahsoka in a panic and Anakin pale, trembling, clutching holes through the restraints hurriedly placed to contain him.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Ahsoka says, struggling for calm. “I was knocked out, he took the Alpha on alone, the kaiju is dead but – ”

“It was beautiful,” Anakin rasps, and Obi-Wan, knowing he is being cruel but unwilling to waste any more time, gently shoves Ahsoka out the door and closes it behind her before slowly coming to sit at Anakin’s side.

“What was?” he asks, calmly.

“Gods,” Anakin breathes, and Obi-Wan finds himself unsure whether he should take that word as an interjection or as an answer. “We shouldn’t be killing them, Obi-Wan. They know more about how the universe works than we _ever_ have, or ever will.”

His eyes are dark and wide when he turns them on Obi-Wan – bloodshot, full of pain. “I am a Jedi,” he grits out. “I seek knowledge, no matter _where_ it may take me.”

Obi-Wan reaches out, takes Anakin’s remaining fleshy hand in both of his. “You drifted with this kaiju.”

“Drifted!” Anakin’s snort of derision is what starts to break Obi-Wan’s heart. “ _Union_ , Master, unlike any you ever granted me. _That_ is what I achieved.”

“Padawan,” Obi-Wan says, sharper than he has ever been, and the Thing that is Anakin turns towards him with a snarl ready on its lips. “I need you come back to us, _now_. I need you to remember where you are, and what your duty is, and _who_ it is you are sworn to protect.”

Anakin blinks. He trembles. He looks outwards, towards where Ahsoka, unseen, is anxiously waiting; he clutches briefly with a hand at something hidden under his tunics, or perhaps just at his heart.

When he next opens his eyes, he is visibly himself again, although terrified, and Obi-Wan lets part of his own fear slip gratefully away from him.

“Hello there,” he says, not unkindly, and Anakin pulls him down into a crushing embrace; Obi-Wan thinks his Padawan might cry, but in the end, he does not.

He tells Yoda that Anakin needs leave, and that in fulfilling it he could be sent to patrol a Core planet, just in case – Naboo, he suggests, and Yoda, mercifully, does not ask any questions.

It is inevitable, perhaps, that sooner or later the Confederacy will find ways to copy clone jaeger technology, and with the Dark on his side Dooku’s creations are tangibly monstrous. Obi-Wan is kept busy for many months, mostly on his own, in chasing the giant jaeger named Grievous around the Outer Rim while Anakin is kept busy defending the Core. The loss of Ahsoka, whose young mind cannot take the strain of so much death, turns their distant conversations short and sour even though Obi-Wan knows that Anakin is aware that she will be safer, now, and happier, and finally have a chance to grow.

But there are signs of progress, nonetheless, which penetrate through the gloom of the exhaustion which seems to be bending Obi-Wan ever so slowly towards the earth, that ties him ever closer to his fleet and his clones, which smothers him in the hive-mind of others until he no longer knows where he begins and ends. There are still kaiju entering the galaxy, enormous ones, but they are fewer in number; droids and Grievous’s twisted subordinates take on more and more of the fight, and are more easily crushed. Even Dooku falls to them, in the atmosphere of Coruscant itself. Triumphalism sneaks into the chatter of the rump Senate, though not, Obi-Wan is gratified to notice, into the grave speeches of Senators Organa or Amidala. He will not wait – he will continue to fight, until there is nothing left to mourn.

An end is coming, however, that much is certain, and when Obi-Wan flies – in a Starfighter, of all things – down to the surface of Utapau in sneaky search of Grievous’s final hiding place, he is aware that there is something of his old panache about him again. He proves it by destroying Grievous from up close and with the use of nothing more than the carefully-packed proton torpedoes hidden in his hull.

Anakin is due to join him, he remembers, giddily, standing in the wreckage of the mighty enemy jaeger and looking up into blue skies, where his fleet is appearing, surrounded by flecks of brilliant, sturdy, brave white. Anakin will join him here, and they will fly _Alpha Hope_ back to Coruscant together, and go _home_.

He is so eager for it, in fact, that he clambers into the cockpit of _Alpha Hope_ where she stands in repose on one of Utapau City’s largest landing platforms even though he knows it will be hours, if not days, before Anakin arrives – he needs to be there, he feels, needs to talk to R2, who is as rude and cheerful as ever, needs to remind himself of her muted, comforting light.

It is there, as he is scouring through datapads-full of reports on her latest services back at the Temple and sitting, absent-mindedly, in the quiet shadow of his harness and clamp, that a proximity alarm starts to blare from his console, and _Alpha Hope_ shivers as R2 whistles curiously and begins to investigate. Obi-Wan frowns, sits up straighter, leans over the flashing banks of light and flips a switch.

“Incoming jaeger, please identify,” he says, repressing a yawn.

There is no answer, and R2’s beeps turn worried. Obi-Wan stands, presses a few more buttons.

“Incoming jaeger, please identify,” he says again, peering more closely at his instruments. “You are on a collision course – I repeat, please respond.”

“ _Sir?_ ”

Obi-Wan looks straight ahead, out of _Alpha_ ’s viewing ports, at the approaching streak of white-clad metal. There are others now, he can see – they are streaming towards him in a ragged cloud, twitching in their flight paths as though in pain, and alarms are blaring all around him, lights flashing red.

“Cody,” he breathes, and he starts to throw himself into his harness, not quite understanding how he knows this one voice among millions so well. “Pull up, man! You’re on course to cause major damage! Are you malfunctioning?”

“ _I’m sorry, sir_.” Even at this distance, both physical and technical, all Obi-Wan hears is bewilderment, confusion, utmost regret. “ _I feel most peculiar –_ ”

And then the jaeger that had a name most dear plunges headfirst into _Alpha Hope’s_ sheet plating, and the explosions begin, and Obi-Wan descends into hell.

*

**TBC**

*


	7. Part 5

*

It is agony.

 _Alpha Hope_ is large enough, of course, that the first explosion, of what had been Cody incinerating itself (himself) deep in her bowels is not enough to cripple her; but that is just the start of it. The remainder of the 212th Battalion impact Obi-Wan’s arms, his legs, coming ever closer, shrieking and groaning, to his Core – sheet metal disintegrates from his skin, falls in splinters from his bones. He staggers, together they list; in the melee of it all, the unbearable weight of _Alpha Hope’s_ systems transferring themselves into Obi-Wan’s head, stronger and more frantic than they have ever been and easily enough to overwhelm him, seems the easy part.

His helmet snaps shut, over a face he knows is covered by his own blood, bursting its vessels. He and _Alpha Hope_ are one, and they are suffering, and he is all she has, now, if she is to survive. He looks upwards, and her head rears, digital projections flickering in front of his eyes as he continues to be battered by creatures he once trusted as his own.

There is just enough left of one of his legs, and its rockets, to lurch them up into the sky; the last clone jaegers follow, in ragged, keening little clouds, but once he breaks through Utapau’s atmosphere they start to drift away, their machinery shutting down and their little mechanical hearts faltering off into silence. _Alpha Hope_ mourns them, even as Obi-Wan can feel her Force-presence being flooded with his own incomprehension and fear; they did not deserve this, he knows.

They had never deserved to be mere tools.

Utapau’s orbit is still cluttered with Republic ships, but despite his newfound mistrust Obi-Wan finds that they pay him no mind; there is enough for them to do, still, wiping out Grievous’s forces on the planet’s surface, for them to take note of the destruction of a battalion. But his mind, and _Alpha Hope’s_ , have already leapt several steps forward by the time he summons the energy, through the immense drain and shuddering effort it takes, to urge the jaeger out into empty space.

When he activates R2’s communications network and reaches outwards, he already knows he will find nothing: and so it proves.

Windu, gone. Yoda, missing. Quilan, gods only know. There is no-one he can raise, no sister-jaeger which answers. Where Anakin should be, there is nothing but a deep well of silence, the significance of which he cannot muster the strength to fathom.

The next time he sees a kaiju, he fully expects it to be enthroned in state in the Corsucant Temple. But there is little chance, he knows, of him ever living long enough to see such an abomination – a certainty which almost brings him comfort. R2’s beeps, as _Alpha Hope_ reads the threads of the Force which keep her flying and finds nothing but frayed and cut strands, rise and meld into an unending, migraine-inducing wail.

In the end, it is Bail who finds them, his fractured, worried message being patched through to the cockpit just as Obi-Wan is reaching the end of his endurance. It is all he can do to put _Alpha Hope_ into the tenuous, dangerous hyperspace path they need to follow; the next time he is aware of anything, there are red warning lights flashing all over the cockpit, and several gentle, trembling hands are unfastening him from where he hangs, senseless, in his clamp.

“It’s me, Obi-Wan,” Bail says, as though from very far away, as Obi-Wan stares dully upwards at the ceilings passing over his head, grey and white durasteel illuminated by impersonal light. “You’re safe.”

“Where?”

“Not important. We’ve brought a mobile jaeger transport. _Alpha Hope_ is being repaired as we speak.”

“Oh,” Obi-Wan mumbles, and falls so deeply asleep it is as though he has left his body entirely.

When he wakes, he feels small, his fingers clutching at himself in incomprehension at the idea that he is mere flesh. Bail is sitting with him, carefully untangles the tubes and instruments that have kept him alive as he shakes.

“Yoda is on his way,” the Senator says soothingly, the touch of his palm on Obi-Wan’s brow the first thing than convinces him that he has in fact returned to his proper plane. But then Bail hesitates, and through the long, grasping reaches Obi-Wan’s mind has left on the universe, he can sense a recoiling, a keening, reluctant withdrawal, as though the Force wishes to spare him pain. “Obi-Wan, I…”

“Where’s Anakin?”

“His jaeger was spotted jumping into hyperspace from Coruscant, towards the Mustafar system,” Bail says immediately, as though relieved to have the burden of this truth taken from him. “Or, well – what might have been his jaeger. My source says it was barely recognizable.”

“What does that mean?”

Now Bail does pause, and when Obi-Wan looks up at him through half-open, hazy eyes it is to the astonishing sight of the Senator, normally so self-possessed, at a loss for words.

“They said it looked like a kaiju,” Organa says, and the mere thought of it renders Obi-Wan senseless once again.

It is Yoda who wakes him next; who persuades him to stand, to walk with him in his bandages and neatly-mended tunics (who took this care, he wonders briefly – who was tasked with this attempt at restoring what has been lost, and did they understand what it meant) into the hangar bay and to look out into space at where _Alpha Hope_ is being repaired, surrounded by floating scaffolding and the buzz and whirr of droids. She is so quiet, desperate to have him back but only if he is willing, a question which he finds himself incapable of answering.

“Fly her again, you must,” Yoda says, and answers his dilemma. “ _Beta Truth_ I have with me, but no jaeger more powerful; decided, I have, to attempt one final assault on the Emperor before I flee.”

When he turns to Obi-Wan, his dark little eyes are full of sorrow, and of a pain Obi-Wan knows has been magnified by his generations, his centuries, of loss – all overwhelmed, now, by the gravity of this disaster. “Drift-compatible we are not, Master Kenobi,” he sighs. “No help can I give you. Your jaeger you must fly alone.”

Obi-Wan wants to laugh; he does, in fact, and it hurts, not just because of its absurdity but because he thinks something has broken deep behind his sternum, something which keeps him hunched and thin. “I’ve had a lot of practice at that, at least,” he croaks.

Yoda’s sideways smile at that makes him think that they must all be damned.

He needs more rest, but he will not get it. It is the most the technicians can to do ensure that _Alpha Hope_ will be able to handle the hyperspace trip to the Mustafar system without his input; it will give him a few more hours of solitude to prepare his mind, if something like what he is about to attempt can ever be prepared for. When he boards into the refurbished cockpit and sends a tendril of himself searching down through her, he can tell that _Alpha Hope_ has been ridded of all the debris of her ordeal; what fragments of the clone jaegers that had penetrated her have been removed, released into space like so much flotsam and trash. The rents and injuries caused to her (the lines and depth of which Obi-Wan can still feel in his sinews, only slowly healing upwards towards the skin) have been patched over, some to perfection, others with jerry-rigged solutions; she is as complete as she will ever be without the benefit of the Temple’s full staff, none of whom are likely to still be alive.

“Are you satisfied?” Bail asks; his voice is pinched and tired, laced through with the fearful knowledge that he is due to fly back into the Emperor’s den. “I’m sorry we couldn’t do more – ”

“She is ready. As am I.” Obi-Wan turns back, puts a gloved hand on Bail’s shoulder, wills himself to commit to this final act of comfort, even if it is not for his own sake. “You will be alright. The Emperor has what he wants.”

“I know.” There has always been quiet determination in Bail, and right now it feels as though it is holding both of them upright. “I intend to make sure he regrets it.”

Their parting takes place in silence; Bail in his ship and Yoda in his jaeger towards Coruscant, _Alpha Hope_ towards Mustafar. Sitting in his dead-silent cockpit (for even R2, it seems, has been struck dumb), Obi-Wan stares at the blur of hyperspace from _Alpha Hope’s_ eyes and practically begs it to calm him.

Miraculously, it works. The jaeger speaks to him in the voice of the universe, the Force made its instrument and himself its vessel; as though eager to acknowledge one of its last remaining servants, he feels it eddying and surging through their limbs. Its light has had a shadow of such breadth and force laid across it that it struggles to survive; cupped in the jaeger’s core, it gutters and spits but refuses to go out.

When he arrives at Mustafar, he finds a monster. It is a Five at the very least, perhaps larger, bursting through all attempt at categorization, and a mutant, too; it bears the coloring and shapes of what had been Anakin’s jaeger, its shoulders covered in twisted parodies of armor and its eyes a muddied nightmare of gold and red.

It has a Naboo ship, sharply silver, in its fist as it turns where it stands in its lake of lava and snarls at _Alpha Hope’s_ approach. Obi-Wan is already planning his first attack as he steps into his clamp; once the unbearable rush and strain of the jaeger settles in his mind his first act is to barrel forward at speed; to ask for his saber at the last moment, and the kaiju-jaeger’s hand parts so neatly from its wrist that Obi-Wan is, in some tiny, distant corner of his mind that is still his own, briefly stunned with surprise.

He just has time to put Padme’s ship down on a nearby landing pad, as gently as he can, before the kaiju is upon him and he gives up all hope of winning.

Obi-Wan sees Anakin only once, in the fight that follows. He thinks he catches a glimpse of a dark figure standing in the blaze of the kaiju’s eye, much as Dooku once did on the dustbowl of Geonosis; he can’t be sure, however, preoccupied as he is with the loss of his saber, which happens quickly, and the subsequent failure of the rockets which are the only thing keeping him from the planet’s molten surface; within minutes (he thinks, he loses track of time so quickly), their feet begin to burn.

He _hears_ Anakin constantly. He cannot make it stop.

 _You denied me this,_ says the kaiju’s roar, its fetid breath leaving ropes of heat and slime across _Alpha Hope’s_ helmet, making it nearly impossible for her to see. _You refused to see_ , Anakin’s own voice says, in Obi-Wan’s head, and any protest he could have made would be, he knows, entirely useless. R2 has started swearing, his shrill beeps and whirrs turned torrential and furious in the direction of his inventor, but Obi-Wan himself cannot bring himself to speak.

Except to think: _I’m sorry I let you think that this was what you needed_.

They have both lost limbs, now, and the end cannot be far off; one dreadful, agonizing crush of planet-destroying jaws rips _Alpha Hope_ in two, her half-charred legs falling uselessly into the volcano, and the kaiju is stumbling on a seething, opposite hand and foot. Obi-Wan’s saber is sparking in its hilt as the kaiju clambers on top of the jaeger, apparently seeking a personal, intimate death; and that is when Obi-Wan sees Anakin again, so motionless, as though his own flesh has been made one with the monster, a horrific corruption of what he had once had with a far nobler entity.

 _Now_ , Obi-Wan thinks, and, just as he had all those years ago when it was left to him to stop Maul, refuses to think any further. He lifts _Alpha Hope’s_ hand; despite her shivering protest, he gouges it into the kaiju’s eyes, forgets that Anakin was ever standing there, and doesn’t stop until the kaiju’s death spasms have ceased.

It is so very quiet, then, despite the unending tectonic howl of Mustafar’s core.

It is nearly an hour, Obi-Wan thinks, before he is able to unclasp himself from his harness and find the strength of body to stagger out onto the planet’s surface. The trek up the hill to the listing Naboo ship seems a more daunting task than any yet set before him, and its ending twice as tragic; the insides of the Naboo ship have been tossed to pieces, and in the ruined medical bay the only thing which has kept Padme’s newborn children alive is the stasis tubes into which they have been placed, miraculously unscathed. Where the Senator’s body is, Obi-Wan cannot guess.

He looks at the datapads left with them, bewildered at their soft cries, and commits their names to memory in honor of all those that have been obliterated. They fuss and start to bawl as he gingerly scoops them up into his arms; what little supplies he can scrounge from the wreckage don’t seem like enough, but they will have to do for now as he staggers back out into the steam and smoke, sheltering their little mouths and eyes in the folds of his tunic.

R2 has been busy in his absence – automatic processes have been set in motion, ones which have set helper droids and mechanical arms to work on the task of dragging _Alpha Hope_ ’s torso out from under the kaiju’s corpse, and when Obi-Wan returns to the cockpit it is to a low, wondering whistle at the digital sight of his precious burdens, followed by a tired, flat little chirp which tells him that, unbelievably, what is left of the jaeger, torn clear of her most damaged parts, can be put into orbit, and from there into a risky, but possible, hyperspace jump.

 _Well_ , Obi-Wan thinks, still mourning Padme – _if we are to die, better it be anywhere but here_. He falls asleep with the babes in his arms, curled into the heat of one of _Alpha Hope’s_ sputtering vents, trusting that R2 knows where to go.

He wakes to the sight of Tatooine’s deserts, and knowing it is finally time to say goodbye.

He loads R2, or at least a clean copy of it, onto a data drive which he stuffs into his cloak; the AI system doesn’t say much as they plummet towards the planet’s surface, and in truth Obi-Wan would not know what to say, either. The Force is taking a deep breath as _Alpha Hope_ falls; it knows, Obi-Wan thinks, that its most dedicated servant is about to leave it.

He squashes himself and the infants into one of the few escape pods left intact; closes the hatch, closes his mind, and launches them away.

It takes longer than he would have expected. He is already standing in the desert, shielding his eyes against the blinding sun, when the jaeger crashes, with a rolling thunderclap of power, deep into the sands. Her bones are broken, and she will lie there for eternity, he thinks, fancifully; but here, in this place, she will never rust. Perhaps she will be taken apart by scavengers; perhaps children will play hide-and-seek in her heart, and wonder where she came from, or if she had a name.

When the twins are ten, and they visit him in the Wastes, his calculations and observations tell him they are 99% compatible. When he is fourteen, Luke, looking through old books and manuals, starts to build something which, a generation and a galaxy away, would have been called a Zeta jaeger. When Leia is sixteen, she tells her Uncle Ben, crossly, that she hears a voice calling to her from the south, as though the wind itself is speaking.

Obi-Wan takes a deep breath, digs the R2 drive up out of his cellar, and goes to his work.

*

**FIN**

*


End file.
